In late February and early March we ran workshops in Melbourne and Sydney with Kevin Bishop from the UK. The workshops focussed on Influencing Change using Stories. Until recently, Kevin was heading the change activities for 60,000 staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

I was recently interviewed for a report created by the executive forum Vistage, titled 12 Trends That Will Define Business in the "New Normal". One of the key trends covered in the report in which they drew on my thoughts is reputation management, excerpted below. Trend 7: Reputation Management. Just as you have to keep your credit score in good standing to own a credit card, you’ll soon have to keep you online reputation in good standing if you want to be trusted or have influence online.

In a couple of years, microblogging tools have become very popular. Twitter has become the number 1 tool for learning in just three years – voted by hundreds of learning professionals in this survey at Jane Hart’s site.

On Monday I ran a management development program for a NSW University. Our program relies on a 'pull' strategy to get participants to determine for themselves the things they need to work on to be better managers and leaders. Each program uses examples collected from within the organisation to help them notice the things that are most important to their people and also the patterns of behaviour embedded in their culture. MORE >>

(Cross Posted to the FM Blog , where Signal will have a permanent home soon). Mobile. It's on everyone's lips, but no one knows what the hell to do about it. At least, that's what I hear from every single marketer I talk to, and I've made it a point to talk to a lot of you in the past few months. MORE >>

5 reasons why your company should be distributed. I’ve noticed a new trend in Silicon Valley. More and more startups are beginning life as distributed companies, and investors and partners are starting to accept it as normal. Our company Automattic is distributed, and I’m ready to sing the praises of running a business in this way. MORE >>

As part of the Big Question this month Open Content in Workplace Learning? , I’m exploring whether Open Content can be used by for-profit companies. And, since Open Content comes in under the Creative Commons license structure. Actually, I’m curious if Open Content ever is not Creative Commons? It’s by definition Open, but theoretically you could choose a different open license. I’ve just never seen it. MORE >>

Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioural economics and winner of the Nobel prize in Economics, tell this story in a recent TED talk. A friend was recently listening to a recording of a beautiful symphony and then at the end of the recording there was a terrible screeching noise. "It It ruined the whole experience for me," he said. Of course the screeching didn't ruin his whole experience because he had 20 minutes or so listening to a beautiful symphony. MORE >>